Extremophile Hunt Begins

February
7 , 2008: A team of scientists has just left the
country to explore a very strange lake in Antarctica; it is
filled with, essentially, extra-strength laundry detergent.
No, the researchers haven't spilled coffee on their lab coats.
They are hunting for extremophiles -- tough little creatures
that thrive in conditions too extreme for most other living
things.

Antarctica's
Lake Untersee, fed by glaciers, always covered with ice, and
very alkaline, is one of the most unusual lakes on Earth.
The upper 70 meters of lakewater is so alkaline "its
pH is like strong CloroxTM," says expedition
leader Richard Hoover of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.
"And to make it even more interesting, the lake's sediments
produce more methane than any other natural body of water
on our planet. If we find life here, it will have important
implications."

Lake
Untersee is a sort of test case for other exotic places around
the solar system (namely Mars, comets, and the icy moons of
Jupiter and Saturn) where life might be found in the extremes.
Many of those places are cold and methane-rich--"not
unlike Lake Untersee."

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"One
thing we've learned in recent years," notes Hoover, "is
that you don't have to have a 'Goldilocks' zone with perfect
temperature, a certain pH level, and so forth, for life to thrive."
Researchers have found microbes living in ice, in boiling water,
in nuclear reactors. These "strange" extremophiles
may in fact be the norm for life elsewhere in the cosmos.

"With
our research this year, we hope to identify some new limits
for life in terms of temperature and pH levels. This will
help us decide where to search for life on other planets and
how to recognize alien life if we actually find it."

Hoover
has already made some new friends in cold places. Earlier
Hoover teams have found new species and genera of anaerobic
microbial extremophiles in the ice and permafrost of Alaska,
Siberia, Patagonia, and Antarctica.

"I
found one extremophile in penguin guano," recalls Hoover.
"When I stooped to pick it up, Jim Lovell, my research
partner then, said, 'What the heck are you doing now, Richard?'
But it paid off."

Most
incredible, though, was the revelation a few years ago that
some extremophiles the researchers found in an Alaskan tunnel
actually came to life as the ice around them melted. These
bacteria had endured being frozen for 32,000 years and were
able to go back to "business as usual" as they thawed
out. If microscopic creatures on Earth can do that, why not
microscopic creatures on other planets?

The
current expedition, consisting of Hoover, Valery Galchenko
of Winogradsky Institute of Microbiology, and Dale Andersen
of the SETI Institute, along with two polar logistics experts
is a preliminary sortie to lay the groundwork for the full-up
operations in December. The team will test key research equipment
and conduct science at lakes in the Schirmacher Oasis in preparation
for the later trip to those same lakes and on to Lake Untersee.
The main expedition to continue and expand this research will
include an international team of 12 to 14 American, Russian,
and Austrian scientists and two educators.

Will
these expeditions reveal never-before-seen microbial creatures
capable of surviving the most extreme conditions? And would
this mean that life exists elsewhere in the cosmos?

"You
can find a lot just by looking," muses Hoover. "Nature
keeps coming up with surprises."

This
expedition is an international collaboration between
NASA, the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute of
the Russian Federation, the Planetary Sciences Foundation,
and the Tawani Foundation, a not-for-profit philanthropic
foundation headquartered in Chicago, Ill. The expedition
is fully funded by the Tawani Foundation. This mission
is being carried out with critical support from the
Antarctic Logistics Center International in Cape Town,
South Africa, and is the first of two international
expeditions planned in 2008.